Melancholy
by Lanonima
Summary: As Lilina gets older, she can't help but think of everyone who got left behind.


The park looked different in winter. What was, the rest of the year, a bustling riot of color and sound became muted and distant, the plants and animals dormant. Covered in snow as it was now, it appeared almost as severe as Castle Ostia itself.

It suited Lilina's mood perfectly.

Now that Madelyn had reached her majority and was officially recognized as Lycia's heir, it was nothing for Lilina to put aside her duties for a day when she needed to. Whatever needed to be done, Madelyn would take care of it. She, somehow, had come out with a much calmer personality than either of her birth parents – Sue's influence, no doubt.

Lilina took a deep breath of crisp, winter air and tried to chase off the pervasive sadness that had been clinging to her for the past few weeks. For once, being in the park did not do anything to settle her spirit.

She was not particularly surprised that Sue tracked her down a few hours later.

Lilina, dressed in her custom brilliant crimson, was not hard to see against the white snow. Sue was not any less noticeable, for all that her clothing was more muted. As she watched her wife approach through the barren trees, Lilina could not help but remember the first time they had come out here.

They had both been so young, back then.

Sue didn't look all that different, still tall and slender as always, her age only apparent from the silver streaking through her dark green hair. Her personality hadn't changed much either – less shy than she had been, but still calm-hearted and clear-minded. The perfect counterpart to Lilina's own rash and fiery personality. Lilina smiled in spite of herself, as she always seemed to when she saw Sue.

Sue smiled in return but didn't say anything. She merely sat down next to Lilina on their bench – Lilina's one civilizing influence on the park, given how often they came here – and reached over to take Lilina's hand in hers.

She didn't need to say anything. After almost thirty years, Sue knew well enough that what Lilina usually needed was just company. And if she didn't need that, she would talk on her own.

So it was today.

"My birthday is coming up, in a few weeks. I'll be turning forty-five." It was inane, pointless. Of course Sue knew that, how could she not? But Lilina had to say it anyway.

"I just keep thinking…thinking that Uncle Orun died at forty-four, back at the start of the war."

"I remember," Sue said, and Lilina knew that she did. She had been staying in Toria with Lord Orun when Bern attacked, had nearly been a casualty herself.

She squeezed Sue's hand. "I'll be older than he ever got a chance to be. And…" Lilina faltered for a minute before she plowed forward, resolute. "And my father too, due to that war. He was thirty-seven. My mother, to illness, at thirty-one."

Lilina gave Sue an imploring look, begging her to understand. She wished she could have stopped there. "My mother's parents, to bandits, they didn't reach forty either. My father's parents to illness, thirty-three and thirty-six. Uncle Uther, at twenty-one. Twenty-one! Madelyn is twenty-one."

She fell silent for a moment, temporarily overwhelmed by it, as she had been trying to avoid being since the onset of winter.

"They were all so…young." She said, finally. "Why'd they have to be so young? Is my family cursed? I never…never even got to meet my grandparents. Not them, not my uncle Uther, all dead before I was born. They never got a chance to meet me, you, our children…. None of them could came to our wedding, my coronation, not any of it!"

Lilina found herself crying. She wasn't a person who grieved easily, but these tears did not want to stop. She didn't resist when Sue pulled her into a tight hug, giving Lilina her shoulder to cry on.

There was always something about Sue, the quiet and deliberate way she moved, the steadiness she exuded – a byproduct of working with horses all her life, perhaps. Lilina always felt secure around her, as she hadn't often felt in her life, and now it was exactly what she needed.

She cried like a little girl, with Sue rubbing her back and making soothing noises.

She _felt _like a little girl. She still felt so young, for all her years, she wasn't so different than she had been as a teenager.

She couldn't imagine it, couldn't process it, how young the rest of her family must have felt, facing their deaths.

She made no move to pull away, after she stopped crying.

"I'm terrified that something like that will happen again. I don't want our children to ever feel like this."

"The continent is at peace," Sue said. "The Western Isles were returned to their people. Sacae was cleaned of bandits. King Mildain is more resolute than his father, Queen Guinevere is more forgiving than her brother, and you are far more intelligent and less petty than any of the Lycian lords. The wars we lived through, that our parents lived through…they won't happen again while we're alive."

"There's no accounting for illness."

Sue clucked her tongue. "Has all that work Countess Clarine done since becoming Etruria's first Healer General been a waste? When was the last time a plague hit any of our countries? Medicine is not what it was."

It was true, and Lilina knew it was true, but neither fear nor grief were known for being entirely rational.

Sue kissed her forehead gently.

"When have our children used their weapons in earnest? Madelyn is not a war mage like you, she's a scholar. Tristan and Simone are not knights, they've done little but participate in those silly Etrurian dueling games. When has Helena ever done more than shoot a few rabbits or deer?"

"They haven't," Lilina had to admit.

"They're not like us. They're not warrior-children. They're just children."

"They're just children," Lilina repeated. It was a comforting thought. That their children were not like them, that they did not have to share the scars – physical and emotional – of their parents. Nothing had tempered Helena's unrestrained enthusiasm, nothing had hardened Simone's gentle heart, nothing had tainted Tristan's bright humor, nothing had tested Madelyn's steadfast nature. They were not warriors. They were just children, who had never had the weight of world flung onto their shoulders.

Helena, at sixteen, was already older than Lilina and Sue had been, when the war had started. When Lilina had lost the last remaining members of her family. Lilina had grown older than her mother, older than her father. Her children would never have to face things in the same way she'd had to.

If the mingled grief and fear did not dissipate completely, it did, at least, ease a little bit.

"You always know just want to say to me," she told Sue.

"Mhm. You and I have the same heart. I also don't want to see the kind of world where our children grow up the way we did."

They sat in silence for a while, enjoying the peace of the park and one another's company. Lilina leaned against her wife and marveled about how well they fit together. They had come such a long way from being two awkward girls on the plains of Sacae, unable to come up with anything to say to one another.

Eventually she said "It's because of us. My parents, your father, they fought to build a peaceful world. I guess we've done a better job. I just wish that they were here to see it, that they could have been here for it, all of it."

"I know," said Sue. "Your parents would be proud of you, for what you've built. For the fact that you won't miss out on those moments for our children. Birthdays, weddings, coronations, grandchildren…we can be there for all those things."

"Grandchildren! They better not, they're far too young."

"You were only two years older than Madelyn is now when you had her."

Lilina laughed. "There you go again, my wise Sacaean wife. What's that saying…_those who worry about snow clouds in summer won't notice the sunlight?_"

Sue laughed, too. She always did, when Lilina quoted proverbs back at her. Sometimes they could go back and forth endlessly, trading proverbs and idioms. She swore Sue made half of them up, but that didn't mean they weren't truthful.

Lilina wiped her face clear of any trace of tears.

"Well, Sue love, you've pleased your queen. Is there some sort of boon she can offer as a reward?"

"There might be," Sue said, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she leaned forward to kiss Lilina. "But I think we ought to go inside first, don't you? This cold is punishing, and we're not as young as we used to be."

Lilina allowed herself to be pulled up off the bench. They walked back to the castle hand in hand, and she smiled the entire time, leaving grief and guilt and fear behind.

Lilina knew that part of her heart would always ache for her family, the futures they weren't allowed to have. But Sue was right, as she so often was. Lilina had a future ahead of her. _They _had a future ahead of them, their children had futures too. Bright, peaceful futures.

Her family would never forgive her for missing it.


End file.
